‘Police brutality is a big problem in the US’

Police arrest an Occupy Wall Street protester during a demonstration to show support for their counterparts in Oakland, California (AFP Photo / Spencer Platt) / AFP

The OWS protests continue across the US and as the police continue to crackdown on protesters after violent clashes and arrests over the weekend, some activists believe that police have gone too far in their reliance on excessive force.

Activist Timothy Frawls told RT that the problem has a lot to do with the militarization of police, which was ramped up in the aftermath of 9/11.

“Police brutality is a big problem in the United States and the Wall Street protests are showing that,” Frawls said. “That is one issue that a lot of people are organizing around.”

“When there has been violence it is when there are dozens upon dozens of riot police in full gear," he added. “It is almost like the police looking for a fight. And with that kind of an attitude you are going to get one.”

Timothy Frawls says that ‘stop and frisk’ policy is a perfect example of New York police overusing their authority on a regular basis.

“I observed a march two weeks ago in Harlem that was against the NYPD’s policy of what they call ‘stop and frisk,’ which is they just stop people on the street and frisk them for some suspicion of wrongdoing,” he said. “But 90 per cent of the people who are stopped and frisked – and there are hundreds of thousands of them every year – go free, they are not even issued citations.”

However, Frawls admits there are differences in how the police departments around the US treat local protesters.

“Depending on what community you are in there is going to be a different police response because of the different cultures in those police departments.”

Being one of the protesters, Timothy Frawls, would like to see a more open political system in the US. And he says that the protesters have already succeeded to some degree.

“Republicans are talking about social inequality; Democrats are talking about corporate personhood and the other very important issues to a lot of people down at the protests in the financial district,” he said. “The OWS protests are already changing the political dialogue in the country.”